Sequoyah and His Talking Leaves: A Play About the Cherokee Syllabary

Sequoyah and His Talking Leaves: A Play About the Cherokee Syllabary
by Wim Coleman (Author), Pat Perrin (Author), and Siri Weber Feeney (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Doing what no one had ever done before, Sequoyah set about creating a written Cherokee language – helping preserve the tribe’s history and culture even today.

Snippet:
Sequoyah: Why, many words use the same sounds! There are far fewer sounds then there are words! I need to discover every sound used in the Cherokee speech. Then I’ll be able to create marks for all of the sounds.

Historian 2: Many people call Sequoyah’s writing system and alphabet. Actually, it was based on the individual sounds of words, or syllables–so it was really a syllabary.